Task-irrelevant angry faces capture attention in visual search while modulated by resources.

Abstract

We investigated the attentional capture effect of emotional faces under sufficient or restricted attentional conditions. In a modified visual search paradigm, three kinds of schematic faces (angry, happy, and neutral) served as stimuli. Participants were instructed to search for a target face indicated by a dot and to respond to the dot's position. In this design, the emotional content of the face is task-irrelevant and does not need to be attended. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that having an angry face as the target face elicited a faster response than did the neutral target face, and when the angry face is used as a distractor, the response to the target was delayed compared to the response with no such distractor. Experiment 2 included inverted faces to decrease emotional content; results showed that inversion of the faces reduced the effect of angry faces on the search performance. When attention was cued to a specific area in Experiment 3, the effect of angry faces outside of the cued area became weaker. In conclusion, the results indicate that a task-irrelevant angry face can capture attention beyond top-down control, but this effect is modulated by the availability of attentional resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).

Only irrelevant sad but not happy faces are inhibited under high perceptual load

“…Studies have shown that more resources are needed to process sad faces (Srivastava & Srinivasan, 2010). In addition, negative faces tend to capture attention when multiple stimuli were presented in the display (Huang, Chang, & Chen, 2011;Öhman, Flykt, & Esteves, 2001; see Srinivasan & Gupta, 2010;Experiment 2). In our study, sad faces trying to capture attention might have to be strongly inhibited so that performance in the primary task was not affected, leading to negative evaluation in the high-load condition.…”

Exogenous (automatic) attention to emotional stimuli: a review

“…However, data on the negativity bias are conditioned by a sort of “experimental negativity bias”: Whereas all studies present negative distractors, only 23 studies (41.82 %) present positive distractors too. Among the latter studies, which are especially relevant here since they allow valence effects to be distinguished from arousal effects, negative distractors, and not positive ones, elicited higher indices of attentional capture than did neutral distractors in 6 studies (Horstmann et al, 2006; Huang, Chang & Chen, 2011; Lichtenstein-Vidne et al, 2012; McSorley & van Reekum, 2013; Nummenmaa, Hyona & Calvo, 2009; Sussman, Heller, Miller & Mohanty, 2013) and, along with positive distractors, in 13 (Carretié et al, 2004; Carretié, Kessel, et al, 2013; Carretié, Rios, Periáñez, Kessel, & Álvarez-Linera, 2012; De Cesarei, Codispoti & Schupp, 2009; Fenske & Eastwood, 2003; Gilboa-Schechtman et al, 1999; Hahn et al, 2006; Hodsoll, Viding & Lavie, 2011; Junhong et al, 2013; López-Martin et al, 2013; Müller et al, 2008; Schimmack & Derryberry, 2005; Syrjänen & Wiens, 2013). Two studies showed greater exogenous attention to positive stimuli, and not to negative stimuli, than to neutral stimuli (Aquino & Arnell, 2007; Feng, Wang, Wang, Gu, & Luo, 2012), and in both cases, positive stimuli were of sexual content (the remaining two experiments—Eimer, Holmes & McGlone, 2003; Pessoa et al, 2002—are among those not showing any differential effect of emotional distractors with respect to neutral).…”

“…3: 95.67; Exp. 4: 94 %Faces3: Neutral, Negative, Positive (taking the 5 experiments as a whole)Center at 2.86BehaviorYes, BehaviorNeg & PosHuang et al 2011 Exp. 1: 11/12 (18–27).…”

Effect of distracting faces on visual selective attention in the monkey

“…Some studies indicate that capture only occurs in low perceptual load conditions (14,15). Functional MRI (fMRI) has shown that the amygdala response to affective stimuli is modulated by task demands (16,17).…”